


Lighthouse

by withered



Series: House of Mine [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Everyone Is Alive, M/M, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Timeline What Timeline, because angst, except Allison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24647077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: He had magic and he burned with it, burned everyone else too. And now that the Nogistune is gone, Stiles is left with the yawning empty of it. It’s cold and relentless, and Stiles remembers, in his more lucid moments how a chill so pronounced that you breathe out fog is the supernatural’s way of telling you there are ghosts - and if that’s the case, Stiles, at least, will always have their company.Until Derek reappears.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: House of Mine [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1428280
Comments: 14
Kudos: 278





	Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties are taken because plot. Timeline what timeline.

Stiles gets nightmares, he hallucinates, he sees things. Magic is a lot less Disney then he’s been led to believe. He counts his fingers constantly. Counts everyone else’s. 

Not that there is really anyone else.

Not after what he's done.

Not after who he's hurt.

He had magic and he burned with it, burned everyone else too. And now that the Nogistune is gone, Stiles is left with the yawning empty of it. It’s cold and relentless, and Stiles remembers, in his more lucid moments how a chill so pronounced that you breathe out fog is the supernatural’s way of telling you there are ghosts - and if that’s the case, Stiles, at least, will always have their company.

Until Derek reappears. 

Stiles doesn’t ask where he’s been, where he’d gone. If he'd even been gone at all, to be honest. Time. Doesn't move the way Stiles is used to anymore. 

If he loses whole days, no one tells him differently, and Stiles doesn't really feel the loss anyway if he did. 

Derek on the other hand. He looks like every hour has weighed on him, looks more exhausted than Stiles feels. 

He doesn’t know how it happens or why Derek comes back, and why he comes back _to Stiles_ , but he’s there and on top of being sleep deprived, constantly terrified and frozen straight to his soul, Stiles is also selfish, and werewolves run hot, don’t they?

Once upon a time, Stiles thought that there’d be nothing scarier than a werewolf. 

He knows differently now. 

But.

But maybe the monsters in his head don’t. Stiles is willing to take the chance, and Derek-Derek doesn’t say no, doesn't pull away. Not from reaching for him. Not from drawing close. Not from crying. Derek just. Holds him. And Derek's warm in the way only another person can be, a warmth that isn't just temperature but in company, comfort. It's not the kind of hugs Stiles used to get from his dad, but. But it's more than enough.

The thought alone pulls a wounded whimper from him and his eyes burn with the tears that start afresh. Derek jerks a little at it, startled because apparently Stiles' has been. Quiet.

"Don't get used to it," Stiles tells him, too many shades of worn to sound like the old him, to sound like anything less than the counterfeit he is. But Derek just says, "Knowing you, I don't doubt it."

And that sounds too soft to be the same Derek that body checks him into walls, but. It's still Derek. Gruff, emotionally constipated Derek. And even though he's the biggest sourpuss Stiles' knows, he's also an A+ hugger.

Stiles tells him so which pulls a huff from Derek that sounds almost reluctantly amused.

Stiles will take it.

He'll take anything at this point. He doesn't think Derek will mind. Not when Stiles asks, hushed in the faint yellow glow of his bedside lamp, where Isaac and Erica and Boyd are, and Derek replies with _gone_ with the kind of finality that makes Stiles shiver. "I didn't -"

"No." Derek's looking at the ceiling, not at him, but their fingers are tangled together and they fit between Stiles' own so he knows there's five on each hand and - "It wasn't you."

Stiles isn't sure. But he believes.

Because he has five fingers on that hand. And Derek has five fingers in his. And Stiles isn't dreaming.

"They're all right," Derek says, maybe to comfort Stiles or to comfort himself. "They'll be okay."

Stiles counts their fingers at school when he sees them. Scott and Lydia and Jackson and Isaac and Boyd and Erica and - all huddled together in the least superstitious circle of supernatural entities, and internally he laughs because _is that how we look, so fucking obvious?_ Except he doesn't laugh because his throat feels raw from screaming for the months he wasn't himself, and crying in the night with Derek holding him so he doesn't shake apart, and. Stiles doesn't feel like laughing.

He doesn't feel like anything.

But Derek makes him eat.

Because Derek is at his house when he gets home now, and Derek cooks.

(He also does the dishes and the laundry, buys groceries and replaces light bulbs like he lives there. Which Stiles supposes he kind of does. The thought doesn't bother him as much as he thought it would.)

Derek doesn't tell Stiles to eat what he's made. He just. Glares at him, nudges the food in his direction, and sits there to watch him eat it.

At first, Stiles is angry about it. For the first time the emotion surges out of him, something that shatters the numbness and the empty. He stomps away. He yells. He breaks things. He says horrible stuff he might mean but more things that he doesn't.

(Nothing as bad as "Maybe they deserved it" Jesus fuck, Scott.)

Derek takes it. Derek cleans up the mess. He leaves the food wrapped in the fridge to be reheated. And he takes every terrible thing Stiles says, and he absorbs the impact of it like he would a punch to the gut.

Now that Stiles can watch Derek being Derek, Stiles knows the wolf isn't made of stone. Derek's jaw works, his teeth grinds, he swallows and he blinks - too rapid and hard to be normal - because. If anything Stiles has learned about himself in the past few months since the Nogistune, since before it even, is that if he knows how to do anything at all it's to hurt other people, and Stiles. Doesn't want to do that. Not to Derek. 

Not when Derek's the only one talking to him. Not when Derek's the only one who _looks_ at him. 

So, Stiles eats.

Derek complains enough about Stiles' body odor after a little while to succumb to a shower, though Stiles. Doesn't want to be alone in there. Not with the memory of his reflection not being himself.

So Derek sits on the closed lid of the toilet seat, and he's there while Stiles is naked behind the shower curtain. Every now and again, Derek will say something stupid - about the neighbors or the grocery store or the weather or what he's recently watched on Stiles' Netflix account. But he's there and he's paying attention, and Stiles knows Derek won't let anything happen to him because. Derek's lost everyone. His family, and the pack that he made, but Derek hasn't _left_ because. Because Derek still has Stiles. 

"You're all I've got too, man," he tells the wolf, and it would be pathetic and sad really, but Stiles is just. He's relieved. Because Stiles. He can hurt Derek, yes, but he can't kill Derek. Not like he'd killed -

Derek just hums, running his hand over Stiles' over growing hair and ushers him back into his room.

In the dark that night, huddled together, Derek tells him, "I'm not all you have."

Stiles doesn't argue because he doesn't want to. Not really. He wants to believe Derek, but that's hard to do when his dad is avoiding him, when Scott won't look at him, when no one will but Derek. 

He doesn't hear this rebuttal, but he knows Stiles.

Not as well as his dad or Scott, but Derek knows Stiles _now,_ and now is important because Stiles doesn't even feel like he knows himself anymore.

Derek seems to know this too so he pushes distraction in front of him - exam preps and notes, index cards and reference books and fucking _Wikipedia_ because those things are familiar, those things Stiles knows.

"I can't tell if you're just trying to get me to do your homework for you."

Derek snorts. "I got my GED thanks."

He flutters his lashes. "Aw, I knew I could teach you manners."

Derek lightly kicks his desk chair making Stiles spin, his laughter startled out of him that for a moment there's nothing but that noise coming out of Stiles. He didn't think he could make that sound anymore. Derek looks just as surprised, but of course that's not all that obvious except for the way Derek's mouth softens a little, how he looks away and hums in return, and. It's a good day.

It isn't always, but.

He's trying. Derek is there to make sure he tries.

The cold nothing in Stiles' bones and beneath his skin feels like its thawing, and Scott may not look at him anymore, and his dad might never want to be around Stiles again, but.

Stiles doesn’t feel as cold with Derek nearby; standing at his shoulder, hip-checking him at the kitchen sink, keeping vigil while Stiles is in the shower, when Derek is sleeping right beside him.

And though sometimes Stiles' breath will condense at his exhale, he finds comfort in the fact that the mist bears no ghosts, that with Derek here through the mist there is nothing but Derek's red eyes looking back at him. 


End file.
